How To Create A Successful & Profitable Course on Udemy

If yes, this article is for you. In this article, I will discuss the roadmap to create a Udemy course which is appealing, reliable, authentic and engaging. At the end, I will share a free course which you can enroll right away to learn the pro tips.

Considering the fact that Udemy has more than 25000 courses, it is hard to stand out from the crowd to capture the attention of the audience especially if your course content has been done before. Keeping below-mentioned tips in mind, it’s guaranteed that your course will attract traffic, even if you don’t have an experience as an instructor previously.

1. Create an Outline of Your Course Content

1. Choose the right topic – You can either pick a topic which you are specialized in or you can check out the popular courses which are available on Udemy and choose a topic accordingly. In both the cases, you will find numerous available courses on Udemy. Watch, learn, analyze and, think what is that one thing which you can offer that will make your course better or different than all the other courses.

2. Identify your audience, determine the level of the course, whether the course is a beginner’s course or is an advanced course and, set goals for yourself and for your audience.

3. Pick a Captivating Title: it’s very crucial to have a course title which is catchy, short and descriptive. Optimize your title for keyword research, that will ensure that you will have a higher ranking in search results. Also, decide how will you break down all the lessons and pick a title for each section accordingly.

4. Decide the format for the Body of the Course: Set out a plan on how will you break down all the lessons and pick a title for each section accordingly. On Udemy, You can teach in 6 different formats: Text, video, presentations, Audio, document, and mashup. Mashup (Video and Presentation) is the most recommended of the formats. Recommendation:

Some Recommendations:

Use 60% video for your course creation as it engages all the sensory senses and is the most engaging way of interaction.

Keep the length of each lesson between 2 -10 minutes.

Every lecture must have an introduction and conclusion which explains what this lecture is all about and what will they gain in the end.

Build a rapport with the audience, and engage. You can always do a quiz ups between lectures to make it engrossing and interactive.

Once you are finished with the above steps, Upload a test video on Udemy explaining your course and its material to receive a feedback on your course. You can always incorporate the assessment in your final course outline.

2. Produce Your Content

To give your audience a spectacular and phenomenal feeling, it’s important that the quality of your lectures excellent and pleasing.

1. Video Recording and quality: Your video has to be in 720p HD to publish your course in Udemy. To record in 720p HD, you can use your smartphone (cross check on google search), camera, tablet or DSLR. Ensure that 720p format has a resolution of 1280×720 or an aspect ratio of 16:9. For screen recording and editing, I recommend you to use Camtasia. It’s simple and easy to use and anybody with a non-technical background can use it. Prepare a script and rehearse a few times before you press the record button.

Harsh Agrawal, uses Camtasia for all his recordings.

2. Audio Recording and Quality: For audio, use a quality microphone and make sure that the voice is clear, crisp, and the background is free of any noise.

3. Perfect Your Content

After you are done with the above steps, you have already completed 80% of your course. However, the rest 20% of your course i.e. the sales page of your course will be the major factor in deciding the success of your course. Without a good and effective landing page, it would be impossible for you to create a niche in the market and attract a potential audience.

The landing page constitutes four major portion

1. Course Image: The Course image is present on the top left-hand corner of your page. You can get an awesome landing page designed from Odesk or Fiverr at a very nominal rate.

2. Course Summary: This is the most important section which highlights what will a student learn if he proceeds with the course. Clearly define the objectives of the course in first few lines, focus on the problem that your course aims to solve, reason why your course is different than the already available courses, and keep it easy and simple to understand.

Bonus Tip: Try to use bullet points as much as possible as it is will make the summary easy to read and understand.

3. Author Profile: This is where you tell your potential readers about yourself. It’s recommended to have a detailed author profile as this can increase your CTR, and thus ensure better conversions. Explain why are you qualified to teach this course, and mention your past related works and clients. This will help you in building an authority and gaining the trust of your readers. Here is one such author profile from Udemy:

4. Promo Video: Udemy advises to keep the promo video precise (2-3 min) and simple. Highlight all the important aspects of your course, and don’t forget to include a call-to-action at the end of the video. I recommend you to make a promo video once you have finalized all other sections of your course. Here is an example of good Promo video for Udemy courses:

Lastly, decide on the pricing of the course. Offer a value for money course. I will cover the pricing part in detail, in upcoming article in this series, as it’s the most vital part for the success of your course.

Once you submit the course, Your course will be evaluated by the Udemy team based on their Course Quality Checklist based on which they will send you recommendations and suggestions.

Congratulations! You are now an instructor on Udemy.

Bonus:

If you are all set to launch your first successful Udemy course, I recommend you to enroll for their free course. In this course, you will learn everything about launching & making your course successful.

Are you an instructor on Udemy? If yes, share how you planned your content for Udemy and did it work for you.

This is the second in a series of articles which ShoutMeLoud plans to publish about Udemy. You can read about my previous article on Udemy here. Be sure to subscribe to our email list to stay updated about our upcoming articles.

Helpful post indeed! I was a bit fearful to create an Udemy course because I have ZERO skills doing slides/screen shares/etc. I am so good just talking in front of the camera though and to make things sweeter .

Thanks for the helpful nudge in the right direction 😉 I have set up a course yet need to get the outline down to put the wheels in motion. I’ll get cracking on that.

This is a really awesome stuff to learn. I didn’t knew about it. The importance of creating video is awesome and seems like with UDEMY one can turn things like anything. Need to learn and utilize this in blogging area in coming days to make the most out of it.

Helpful post indeed! I was a bit fearful to create an Udemy course because I have ZERO skills doing slides/screen shares/etc…..I am so good just talking in front of the camera though and to make things sweeter I have a 1080 HD camera that creates stunningly clear videos, along with a background in paradise, here in Bali.

I may need to do what I do best, cover my topics, go heavy on me chatting, and then, do a little promo video to set everything up. If I play to my strengths I feel I can create a kick butt course on Udemy……when I find the time to do it, between my blog posts, podcasts, eBooks and running my online businesses.

Thanks for the helpful nudge in the right direction 😉 I have set up a course yet need to get the outline down to put the wheels in motion. I’ll get cracking on that.

Video gets more attention and is more interesting rather than just sharing power point presentation and slides. Infact, one of the criteria for getting a heads up from udemy is to publish 60% of the total course in Video.

What’s best about Udemy is that they already have created a video – power point mashup which allows you to upload a video and sync it with the Power Point presentation. The best mashup should be between 3-10 min.

Always start with, what’s the mashup all about and what will students get out of it at the end. Do not just read through the presentation. Be specific of the goals that you want your students to achieve at the very end. Also, at the start of the presentation, give an outline of the previous lecture.

Creation and setup process of new courses on Udemy with easy and effective style to give proper understanding is great. A quality video course on knowledgeable & informative topics have good chances for selling. The tips on Responsive Web Design, Author Profile and Promo Video are truly efficient and helpful. I heard that some instructor earned $1.6 million on Udemy in one year. It shows Udemy is truly money making and knowledge sharing platform.